Published: July 26, 2025
“Ahhh, it’s all falling apart…”
“Same here.”
The prototype made with trombe turned out well, but those made from other materials did not fare as well.
Maybe it was because the fibers lacked stickiness, or perhaps the fibers were shorter than expected. They didn’t intertwine properly, wouldn’t stick together, and ended up crumbling during drying.
“What if we add more tororo? Would that help? What do you think?”
“We just have to keep trying whatever comes to mind.”
To help the fibers clump better, we added extra tororo and tried making slightly thicker paper so it wouldn’t tear easily.
“How’s this?”
“We won’t know until it dries, but hopefully it works.”
The paper, made thicker with more tororo, hardened like a rock and cracked with a snap when peeled off the board. Watching the fragments crumble and scatter, I was left dumbfounded.
“Is this a failure?”
“Yeah, it’s more like it broke than tore. At least it wasn’t really paper.”
I couldn’t tell if the problem was the ratio of fibers, tororo, and water not matching, or if the materials themselves weren’t meshing well.
I had read that plants generally could make something paper-like, but here my usual knowledge didn’t apply. It felt like I wanted to scream, “How did it come to this?” with the bizarre failures that kept appearing.
“I wish we could mass produce trombe, though.”
“Can’t be done!”
“Wouldn’t it be possible if we had trombe seeds?”
I thought that with those red fruits I picked up before, harvesting trombe wouldn’t be too difficult, but Lutz shook his head vigorously.
“Don’t go looking for those! You want to destroy the forest?”
“If we find seeds, maybe we could all gather and harvest them when they start growing, like last time?”
It would be troublesome if we didn’t know when they’d sprout, but if we found the seeds and several people waited for them, we might be able to manage.
However, Lutz pressed his temples and adamantly said no.
“Trombe sprouts unpredictably! It’s too dangerous!”
“Oh, I see.”
Apparently, I had just happened to pick up a seed right before sprouting last time; not all seeds would grow immediately. Lutz’s anger convinced me to give up on that mysterious “sprout-wood.”
“…I wish you’d learn our common sense faster.”
“I’m trying my best, you know.”
Since I had hardly ever left home since birth, my memories from Urano Motosu's previous life were longer and richer, so I naturally leaned on her judgment standards.
But after telling Lutz about the other memories inside me, he began correcting my occasionally off thoughts.
“Anyway, trombe is dangerous. When it grows, it sucks up all the soil’s nutrients around it, and nothing grows on that land for a while after. Mass production is impossible.”
“What?! It’s that dangerous? But it wasn’t like that last time, right?”
“I told you it was weird! Didn’t you listen?”
“I didn’t understand what normal trombe was like or how weird it was.”
Trombe was the best quality but only appeared in autumn and was too dangerous; mass production was impossible.
Rather than wishing for what we didn’t have, it was more productive to make do with what we did. So, we kept experimenting.
We adjusted ratios, pounded fibers more, tried tororo from suramo bugs instead of edil fruits, and made gradual improvements, aiming to mass-produce with wood commonly available nearby.
“Folrin is best among these.”
“Yeah. If we mix a bit more suramo bug tororo with folrin, it might be ready for commercial use.”
After trying three types of softer wood taught by the lumber dealer, folrin produced the thinnest paper.
Though folrin fibers were tougher and harder to beat, the more we pounded, the more sticky the fibers became. Once we realized that, persistent pounding made comparatively good paper.
By tweaking the water ratio bit by bit, we discovered the best formula. I wrote it down on a stone slab and dusted my fingertips.
“This should work, right?”